Things I've Been Silent About

by Azar Nafisi

  Then there are other members of our family whose support made the writing of this book easier: my good friends and in-laws Mani and Q Aghazadeh, Taraneh Shamszad, and, in memory of our beloved friend Mohammad Shamszad, for his generosity, tenderness, and curiosity. My cousin Hamid Naficy, who read an early draft of the manuscript, for his time and his wonderful insights. And our good friend “Faryar.”

  For their affection, support, and the magic of their company and conversation I would like to thank: Joanne Leedom Ackerman, Ladan Boroumand and my cousin Abdi Naficy (for making me feel that I am in Paris, no matter where I live), Farah Ebrahimi, my uncle and aunt Reza and Ashraf Naficy, my cousins Nader and Koroush Naficy Samantha Power, Alberto Manguel, “Pari,” Sophie Benini Pietromarche, Jacki Lyden, Haideh Daragahi, Steven Barclay, and the wonderful people at the Steven Barclay Agency, including the newest member, Milo.

  My thanks to friends, colleagues, and the institutions that helped me with the research for the background material: Foundation for Iranian Studies, and my good friend Mahnaz Afkhami, for her support and for providing access to the files and the library at the Foundation. My friend and colleague Hormoz Hekmat, the editor in chief of Iran Nameh, was very generous with his time and resources, providing me with books, valuable information, and help on the historical time line. I am also grateful to my friend Azar Ashraf, special collections assistant at the Princeton University Library, for providing me with documents and sources.

  Massumeh Farhad, the curator at the Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian, was, as always, not only generous with her friendship, insights, and support but also provided access to the wonderful photo archives of the old Tehran and the Qajar period. I am also grateful to her and my good friend Roya Boroumand, for once more reminding me that style and substance are inseparable. I would like to thank Roya and the Boroumand Foundation for Promotion of Democracy in Iran for providing me with information regarding the tragedy at the cinema Rex in Abadan.

  Haleh Esfandiari generously supplied me with information and contacts regarding Saifi and my mother’s youth. Fanny Esfandiari is “the lovely Austrian lady” of my story.

  Majid Naficy, for quotations from his personal essay “Love and the Revolution” published on January 3, 2008, at http://www.iranian .com/main/2008 /love-and-revolution, and the copy of the text of his late wife, Ezatt Tabiian’s will, translated from his book in Persian raftam golat bechinam (Stockholm, Sweden: Baran Publishers, 2000).

  Dr. Farokhrou Parsay’s biographer, Mansoureh Pirnia, for information and the photograph of Dr. Parsay

  The translations of poems from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh are taken from Dick Davis, the incomparable interpreter and translator of some of the best works of Persian classical literature. Translations of poems by Forough Farrokhzad are taken from Michael Hillmann’s biography, A Lonely Woman. Said Nafisi’s memoirs are from the Bih Rivayat-i Said Nafisi: Khatirat-i Siyasi, Adabi, Javani. I am thankful to Baqer Moin’s Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah for information related to the Islamic Revolution.

  I would also like to thank the SAIS Mason Library at Johns Hopkins University, Gelman Library at the George Washington University–SAIS, the DC Public Library (West End branch), Politics and Prose, and Bridgestreet Books.

  My agent, Sarah Chalfant, has been a rare friend and wise consul ever since our first conversation about Henry James. I have benefited greatly from the fierce commitment shown by Sarah and other colleagues at the Wylie Agency to that elusive but essential element in a book—its quality.

  I would like to once more express my gratitude to Johns Hopkins– SAIS for providing me with the space and time to work on this book as well as on my other projects at SAIS. My thanks especially to Dean Jessica Einhorn, and to Tom Keaney, the former director of the Foreign Policy Institute, as well as its present director, Ted Baker. A grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation made it possible for me to sustain writing this book while at Johns Hopkins–SAIS. I am thankful for their generosity.

  Leila Austin started working with me as my assistant, but over the past three years our relationship has developed into a cherished friendship and a valuable collaboration. She did her best to provide me with the space to write my book against not only intrusions from the outside but from those of my own making. She helped at different stages with the research and background for this book as well as on the glossary and time line, performing these tasks with the same sense of intellectual curiosity and personal integrity that she performs every other undertaking.

  At Random House, Kate Medina supported this book and saw it through thick and thin with so much grace, care, and patience. I am very grateful to know that my book is in such good hands. My thanks also to Millicent Bennett for her support at all hours of the day and night, and for her patience with an author reluctant to hand in her manuscript at every step of the way. We seldom appreciate the work and dedication of so many individuals behind the scenes who make the publication of one small book possible. I would like to especially acknowledge my publisher, Gina Centrello, and the wonderful staff at Random House: Tom Perry, Sally Marvin, London King, Benjamin Dreyer, Vincent La Scala, Carol Schneider, Sanyu Dillon, Avideh Bashirrad, Claire Tisne, Rachel Bernstein, Elizabeth Paulson, Debbie Aroff, Anna Bauer, Gene Mydlowski, Laura Goldin, Deborah Foley, Richard Elman, Barbara Bachman, Maria Braeckel, Frankie Jones, Rachel Omansky, Kate Norris, Allison Merrill, Jillian Schiavi, Jennifer Smith, and Carol Poticny.

  Joy de Menil has been, throughout difficult years, both the ideal editor and a good friend. I cannot express my gratitude for her support, her sense of commitment, and her invaluable insights and suggestions. I will always associate and celebrate the birth of this book with the birth of Joy’s daughter, the miraculous Cecily Louise Reed.

  Among my most cherished and well-remembered memories related to the writing of this book are the times I spent as a writer-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome in the spring and summer of 2005 and at the Corporation of Yaddo in June of 2007. To these two great institutions and to their guardian ghosts I would like to express my gratitude.

  Finally, a great portion of this book was written in different places around my hometown of Washington, D.C. I would like to acknowledge the most frequented ones: The Phillips Collection and the National Gallery of Art and their cafés, the Soho Café, the Starbucks on the Waterfront, Barnes & Noble in Georgetown, and the Borders on 18th and L.

  SUGGESTED READING LIST

  THE FOLLOWING IS A SELECTION of literary works mentioned in or closely related to my memoir that are available in translation.

  POETRY

  Simin Behbahani, A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems (translated by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa)

  Forough Farrokhzad, Sin: Selected Poems of Forough Farrokhzad (translated by Sholeh Wolpe) and Bride of Acacias: Selected Poems of Forough Farrokhzad (Modern Persian literature series)

  Fakhredin Gorgani, Vis and Ramin (translated by Dick Davis)

  Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (translated by Dick Davis)

  Hafez Majid Naficy, Muddy Shoes

  Rubayiat of Omar Khayyam (translated by Edward Fitzgerald)

  Rumi Saadi (translated by Ralph Waldo Emerson)

  Sohrab Sepehri, The Lover Is Always Alone (translated by Karim Emami)

  Ahmad Shamlu, The Love Poems of Shamlu (translated by Firoozeh Papin-Matin and Arthur Lane)

  FICTION

  Simin Daneshvar, Suvashun (translated by M. Ghanounparvar)

  Houshang Golshiri, The Prince (translated by James Buchan)

  Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl

  Manuchehr Irani (Golshiri’s pen name), King of the Benighted (translated by Abbas Milani)

  Shahrnoosh Parsipur, Women Without Men (translated by Kamran Talattof and Jocelyn Sharlet)

  Iraj Pezeshkzad, My Uncle Napoleon (translated by Dick Davis)

  Strange Times, My Dear, the PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (edited by Nahid Mozaffari and Ahmad Karimi H
akkak)

  Goli Taraghi, A Mansion in the Sky (translated by Faridoun Farrokh)

  Obeyd-e Zakani, Ethics of the Aristocrats and Other Satirical Works

  NONFICTION

  Abbas Amanat (ed.), Crowning Anguish: Diary of Taj al-Saltana

  Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude

  Najmieh Batmanglij, From Persia to Napa: Wine at the Persian Table

  Edmund Gosse, Father and Son

  Michael Hillmann, A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry

  Nigel Nicholson, Portrait of a Marriage

  Lorna Sage, Bad Blood

  Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

  MOMENTS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY IRANIAN HISTORY

  THE FOLLOWING ARE selected moments in twentieth-century Iranian history that provide a context for this book.

  1905–11: The Qajar king Mozafaredin Shah signs the Constitutional Charter—the first of its kind in the Middle East—in response to widespread protests against the despotic monarchical system. The protests are led by discontented members of the clergy, bazaar merchants, and the Iranian intelligentsia, including women. The resulting constitution sharply limits the power of the Shah, calling for the establishment of a Parliament, and officially placing the Shah under the rule of law. In 1909, Sheikh Fazlollah Noori, a conservative cleric who resisted these reforms, is hanged for opposing the constitution’s curtailment of clerical authority. He is later considered a martyr by Ayatollah Khomeini and religious conservatives.

  1921: In an atmosphere of internal political instability, economic decline, and foreign intrusion into the internal affairs of Iran, a colonel in the Russian-trained Persian Cossack Brigade named Reza Khan leads a successful coup against the Qajar dynasty. He becomes army commander and minister of war under a new prime minister, Sayyid Zia od-Din Tabatabai.

  1925: Reza Khan is crowned as Reza Shah Pahlavi, founder of the Pahlavi Dynasty. In his sixteen years of authoritarian rule, he focuses primarily on the creation of a strong central government, bolstering Iran’s territorial integrity and independence, and creating the administrative, juridical, and educational institutions required for Iran’s entry into the modern world. He is considered a Westernizer, and cracks down on the clergy and any aspect of Iranian society he deems “backward.”

  1935: Under Reza Shah’s rule, the country’s name is officially changed from Persia to Iran. In an effort to swiftly modernize Iran, a government decree bans the wearing of the veil in public in 1936, one of several moves against religious dictates. This decree is later repealed, in 1941, due to popular pressure. Iran’s first Western-style university, the University of Tehran, is established.

  1941: British and Russian interests, historically at odds in Iran, join forces during World War II and occupy the country to fend off German influence over Iranian oil resources. Reza Shah, whose mistrust of the British and Russians had led to closer associations with Germany, is forced to abdicate in favor of his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He is exiled to Johannesburg, where he dies in 1944.

  1943: Iran declares war on Germany, which qualifies it for membership in the United Nations. U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Russian general secretary Joseph Stalin gather in Tehran in November, reassuring the Shah that they are committed to Iranian independence.

  1945–46: Although the 1943 Tehran Tripartite Declaration by the Allied powers guarantees Iran’s territorial independence at the end of the war, in 1945 the Russians refuse to withdraw from the country’s northern border, instead instigating resistance that leads to two separatist movements in the northern regions of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. In 1946 these pro-Soviet autonomous governments are overthrown as a result of pressure from the UN. Security Council and the United States. Saham Soltan (Saifi’s father) serves as prime minister, briefly, in early 1945.

  1951–53: Mohammad Mossadegh becomes prime minister and successfully nationalizes the oil industry, over British protests. Mossadegh clashes with the Shah, and in 1952 the Shah removes Mossadegh from power, but then reinstates him because of his overwhelming popularity; Mossadegh also forces the Shah into an equally brief exile to Rome in 1953. In the fall of 1953 Mossadegh is overthrown in a CIA-supported coup, and the Shah returns to power.

  1961: The author’s father becomes mayor of Tehran.

  1962: As part of a larger social and economic reform package, and under the rubric of his “White Revolution,” the Shah announces a bill that includes a land reform program granting suffrage to women and allowing non-Muslims to serve in Parliament.

  1963: Hassan Ali Mansour is appointed prime minister. The author’s mother is one of six women elected to Parliament, as a result of the White Revolution reforms that allow women increasing access to political and administrative arenas for the first time in Iran’s history. The author’s school principal, Dr. Parsay, becomes a senator and is later appointed minister of education. As part of a larger clerical resistance to the White Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini instigates protests against the secular nature of the government’s reforms. Khomeini is jailed after the protests, which come to be known as the June 5th uprising. The author’s father is jailed in December.

  1964: The capitulation law decrees that American soldiers have diplomatic immunity inside Iran. This causes nationalist furor and further antigovernment sentiment. The incarcerated ayatollah Khomeini is exiled to Turkey. Eventually, he takes up residence in the neighboring country of Iraq.

  1965: Prime Minister Mansour is assassinated on his way to Parliament.

  1967: The family protection law is passed, which gives greater freedom to women and grants them more legal control over their children. The trial of the author’s father runs from September to November. He is exonerated of all charges.

  Dr. Farokhrou Parsay is appointed minister of education. Dr. Parsay spent her career advocating for gender equality in Iran. After obtaining a medical degree, she taught biology at Tehran’s Jeanne d’Arc School for girls. In 1963, Dr. Parsay was elected to Parliament and started petitioning for women’s suffrage and encouraging legislation that amended laws pertaining to women and families. In 1965, she was appointed deputy minister of education, and in 1968 became the first woman to occupy a cabinet position as minister of education. Farokhrou Parsay was executed in 1980 by the Islamic Republic.

  1971: The Iranian monarchy hosts the lavish celebrations of the twenty-five-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great. The festivities at Persepolis, which took ten years to plan and cost up to $120 million, attract worldwide attention and are attended by international royalty and dignitaries. This is met with wide domestic and foreign criticism.

  1975: The creation of the single-party system, under the Ras-takhiz (Rebirth) party, is officially announced by the Shah. However, this attempt to unite the country under the guise of a more participatory government is met with little public enthusiasm. In effect, while becoming more socially liberal, Iran is becoming increasingly closed politically, leading to the alienation of the middle class.

  1976: The Shah changes the Iranian solar calendar from an Islamic one based on the prophet Mohammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina (Hijra) to one based on the pre-Islamic establishment of the Persian Empire in 558 B.C. This attempt to emphasize Iran’s pre-Islamic past further angers the clergy against the monarchy. Mahnaz Afkhami becomes minister of women’s affairs. Mahnaz Afkhami’s career advocating for women’s rights dates back to her leadership of the Women’s Organization of Iran (WOI) in 1970. During her tenure as head of WOI, she worked toward revising the family protection law. In 1976, she was appointed minister of women’s affairs, a post she filled until the 1978 Islamic Revolution. During this time such women’s rights as equal pay for equal work, half time work with full-time benefit for mothers of young children, and the creation of child care centers in the workplace were obtained. In 1978 she was asked to oversee a committee to monitor progress toward women’s full participation in accord with the N
ational Plan of Action.

  1977: U.S. president Jimmy Carter establishes the office of human rights in the U.S. State Department, sparking a wave of human rights demands against the Iranian government. Some political prisoners are released as a result of this pressure. The Shah makes an official state visit to America and is met with protests and demonstrations. The author is among the protesters.

  1978: Widespread domestic opposition to the Shah creates turmoil across the country, setting the stage for the Islamic Revolution. In August, the Cinema Rex in Abadan is set on fire by Khomeini’s followers, killing 430 people. The fire is falsely blamed on the Shah’s secret police, SAVAK. The misplaced blame for this incident further inflames public emotion against the monarchy, paving the way for a clerical uprising that is supported by most secular intellectuals. Iraq expells Khomeini, and he moves to Paris where he continues to receive global attention for his revolutionary message against the regime.

  1979: In response to mounting protests, the Shah leaves Iran in January, appointing Shahpoor Bakhtiar as prime minister. Bakhtiar ultimately fails to gain control of the situation, however. Khomeini arrives in Tehran in February and the Islamic Revolution begins in earnest, changing the country from 2,500 years of monarchy to an Islamic republic under the Ayatollah’s rule. Islamic Sharia laws are reinstated, the family protection law is revoked, and Western influences are banned. The Islamic Republic is established on April 1. Bakhtiar goes into hiding in April, and is eventually assassinated in Paris in 1991. Evin Prison is occupied by revolutionaries. In a breach of the capitulation law granting diplomatic immunity, U.S. embassy diplomats are seized as hostages in November. This sparks international outrage, but the hostages will not be released until 1981.